If you live in one of the cities Google may wire for high-speed Internet, don’t expect it to happen overnight.

Based on the experience of Kansas City, Kan., where Google is building its first high-speed network, it could take a couple of years before your home computer is operating at blazing gigabit speeds.

“It’s a very physical process,” said Joe Reardon, Kansas City’s mayor when that area was selected to be Google’s first high-speed installation. “In order for it to be delivered to us, it means that fiber has to be laid on the ground in the city on rights of way or on poles, and you have to get it into the neighborhoods and into the house. It takes time.”

Last week, Google announced the 34 cities it would consider for the next rollout of its high-speed networks.

Google picked Kansas City in March 2011 after lengthy meetings with city officials, and didn’t begin connecting houses to its fiber optic ring until November 2012.

The main complaint of residents: They couldn’t get the service soon enough.

“It does take time,” Google Fiber spokeswoman Jenna Wandres said. “It’s probably one of the biggest infrastructure projects these cities have ever seen.”

First, the company built a fiber ring around the entire city, then pulled fiber into routing “huts” around the area.

Then crews had to pull fiber out to telecom cabinets on parking strips in every neighborhood of the city. (The service is for houses, not businesses or apartments, unless the apartment owner pays the connection fee for each unit.)

Next, contractors buzzed around town in vans, digging trenches and stringing wire on utility poles. When all that was done, the company scheduled sign-up periods it called “rallies” — a few weeks for each neighborhood. After that, installers made appointments to string fiber into each home being hooked up.

Google divided Kansas City into 202 “fiberhoods” or neighborhoods, establishing that 180 could actually get fiber. Google won’t say how many customers it has, but says there are customers in every neighborhood that has the service.

But as the company rolled out the high-speed hookups, it became clear that some parts of town weren’t going to qualify. Lower-income areas, for one reason or another, were slow to sign up. Google wasn’t extending service to neighborhoods that didn’t reach a threshold of customers that would make it cost-effective to string fiber to them.

A customer dining at Washington’s Oceanaire restaurant noticed an unusual line at the bottom of his receipt: “Due to the rising costs of doing business in this location, including costs associated with higher minimum wage rates, a 3% surcharge has been added to your total bill.”